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Supreme Court Rejects Lawsuit That Sought to Hold Reddit Responsible for Hosting Child Pornography
The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up a case from a victim of sex trafficking who sought to hold Reddit, an online platform, responsible for hosting images of child pornography on the website.
The dispute was the latest targeting a section of federal law that offers broad immunity to online platforms. Earlier this month, the court handed Google and Twitter a victory preserving their ability under the same law — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — to avoid lawsuits stemming from terrorist-related content.
The lawyer charged that the website “creates a thriving platform for child pornography and sex trafficking” and that it “knowingly benefits from child sex trafficking through its receipt and distribution of child pornography.”
A district court concluded Section 230 bars such claims because it immunizes Reddit. A federal appeals court affirmed the ruling.
AI Leaders Warn the Technology Poses ‘Risk of Extinction’ Like Pandemics and Nuclear War
Hundreds of business leaders and public figures sounded a sobering alarm on Tuesday over what they described as the threat of mass extinction posed by artificial intelligence. Among the 350 signatories of the public statement are Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind the popular conversation bot ChatGPT; and Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, the tech giant‘s AI division.
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” said the one-sentence statement released by the San Francisco-based nonprofit Center for AI Safety.
The statement released on Tuesday included other major backers from the AI industry, including Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott and OpenAI Head of Policy Research Miles Brundage.
Addressing the brevity of the 22-word statement released on Tuesday, the Center for AI Safety said on its website: “It can be difficult to voice concerns about some of advanced AI’s most severe risks.”
Philly Relaxes COVID Vaccination Policy for City Workers Now That National Emergencies Have Ended
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported:
Most Philadelphia municipal employees are no longer required to be vaccinated for COVID-19, Philadelphia officials said, ending a pandemic policy that went into effect less than a year ago.
As of last week, only city workers with jobs that put them in contact with patients, such as doctors or nurses, must be vaccinated, said Sarah Peterson, a spokesperson for the city. Philadelphia changed its policy in response to the end of two national emergency declarations earlier this month and new recommendations from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
The relaxed city employee mandate complies with the health department’s requirement that healthcare practitioners in the city, with the exception of home-care workers, be vaccinated against COVID.
The vaccine mandate for city employees was one of the few pandemic safety restrictions still in effect in Philadelphia. On May 10, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health ended a requirement that people wear masks in city hospitals, the city’s last remaining mask mandate.
Politics, Finance Merge as Banks Become Fewer in Number, More Aligned With Government
The absorption of First Republic Bank by JPMorgan Chase on May 1 was just the latest step in a relentless march of consolidation among U.S. banks, as America’s banking industry becomes both more concentrated and more closely entwined with the federal government.
The close relationship between federal agencies and banks has featured, for example, a collaboration between regulators and banks like JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo on a $30 billion fund in a failed attempt to prop up First Republic Bank. It also included surveillance conducted by Bank of America for the FBI in a warrantless search of customer accounts to track travel and purchase records during the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol.
Many who study America’s banking industry say that consolidation will inevitably continue and that the recent failure of several regional banks is merely the latest chapter in this saga. Others worry that having the country’s financial system so heavily concentrated in a handful of “universal” banks that are now “too big to fail” brings its own set of systemic risks and that banks have now become too closely aligned with the federal government.
Fueled by AI, Nvidia Joins the $1 Trillion Club
Stellar earnings and a huge surge in share price have landed Nvidia (NVDA) a prime spot in one of the most exclusive clubs on Wall Street: The chipmaker hit a market cap of $1 trillion on Tuesday.
It’s just the ninth company globally to have achieved such a feat, and only five other companies worldwide currently have the distinction: Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN) and Saudi Aramco.
Nvidia took Wall Street by surprise last week when it reported gangbusters earnings and an exceedingly strong revenue forecast for the year ahead. Fueled largely by the recent boom in AI, the report pushed share price higher and secured its position as one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world.
Nvidia makes chips that power generative AI, a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content, such as text and images, in response to user prompts. That’s the kind of AI underlying ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, Dall-E and many of the other new AI technologies.
Microsoft’s Valuation Could Surge $300 Billion With ChatGPT and AI Set to Transform Its Business, Wedbush Says
Microsoft shares’ 2023 rally will continue thanks to the Redmond-based tech giant‘s efforts to integrate ChatGPT and artificial intelligence into its business model, according to Wedbush.
Ives upped his price target for the tech stock from $340 to $375 a share — up 13% from its current $333 level, equivalent to adding $300 billion worth of market capitalization.
Microsoft shares are already up 39% in 2023, benefiting from both the ChatGPT craze and traders’ expectation that the Federal Reserve will soon pause its interest-rate hiking campaign.
U.K. Government Fights Demand to Hand Over Boris Johnson’s Messages to COVID Inquiry
As Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson established an independent inquiry into his government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now the inquiry wants to see, in full, what Johnson wrote to other U.K. officials as the outbreak raged — but the government is fighting a demand to hand over the material.
Inquiry chairwoman Heather Hallett, a retired judge, has asked the Conservative government, now led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, to produce full copies of Johnson’s WhatsApp messages and notebooks, after initially being given redacted versions.
Hallett — who has the power to summon evidence and question witnesses under oath — set a deadline of 4 p.m. (1500 GMT) Tuesday for the government to hand over the documents, covering a two-year period from early 2020.
But hours before the deadline, the government asked for more time, claiming it didn’t have Johnson’s WhatsApp messages or notebooks. Hallett denied a request to move the deadline to Monday but agreed to extend it by 48 hours, until Thursday.
